To Tell You
by Chaos Dragon
Summary: He only wanted to be the one to tell her. DxS


**It begged me to write it, just like _A Definition of Bad_, and I had no choice. I warn you as I did then, this _is_ a tragedy. If you do not wish to read something of that nature, please close the window or click on the back button of your browser.**

To Tell You

If there was one thing that Sam Manson hated, it was the not knowing. It didn't matter that she'd been helping Danny fight ghosts for more than six years, it didn't matter that every time something happened and he disappeared that he always came back. Well, that wasn't true. There were more times than she cared to recall where she had, with Tucker and Jazz at her side, gone after Danny when he'd been in over his head. That hadn't happened in a while. At least, not until tonight.

Tonight was the first time that they'd ever gone after him and came back without him.

He'd been gone for two days before Tucker had managed to find out where he was being held. Not Walker and the Ghost Zone this time, like they had assumed. No, this time it had been the government. What was left of the Guys in White, so desperate to catch Danny Phantom that they had turned to the denizens of the Ghost Zone to do it. It had been Danny's twentieth birthday when Skulker had come crashing through the walls of his house to take him.

Danny, not wanting to save himself at the expense of his secret… He's let Skulker take him. There'd been nothing that anyone could do.

Sam winced as she yanked the blanket on her bed down and sat, favoring her left side. It was bruised badly, but nothing broken like they had initially thought. The doctors had been so kind, even as Sam and Jazz and Tucker had refused to tell them how the three had been injured. Jazz had gotten off the lightest, she'd wound up with a black eye, a reminder that sometimes it was better to use the thermos straight off rather than trying to interrogate ghosts first.

Tucker had been almost as well off. His glasses were history, broken when they'd been knocked off of his face in a scuffle with an overshadowed agent. He'd had staples to the back of his head, three of them, to close a split scalp from the butt of a rifle. And he'd dislocated a thumb, painful, but easily popped back into joint. He'd have to sit out on video games for a couple of weeks; his PDA would languish for no more than a day.

Sam, however… She hadn't been paying attention like she should have. When they'd found the cell that Danny was being kept in, she'd lost track of everything else as she realized the cell was empty, and that there was a clipboard on a peg next to the Plexiglas door. There were several sheets of paper on them, and she'd flipped to the bottom without a thought, skimming over it and realizing that it was nothing but Danny's vitals. Height, weight, hair, eye and skin color.

Living status: _Unknown._

She'd snorted at that, knowing full well that Danny was alive. There was no other explanation for the way he had inhaled food as a teenager and grown to a staggering six and a half feet by their senior year. Even Tucker and his all meat diet had only managed to clear six feet with an inch or so to spare. Danny had picked up his father's genetics, though she thanked any deity listening that he hadn't inherited the fudge gene.

No, Danny's weakness was strawberry milkshakes, a fact that made Sam smile faintly as she tugged her one remaining shoe off before slithering out of the black pants she'd worn for the rescue attempt.

Her arm ached, and so did her ankle, but it was her own fault. She'd pay more attention the next time they went after him. There would be a next time—she was sure he wasn't going to save himself. If he was going to he would have done it already. And with the rest of the chart still vivid in her mind… No, better not to concentrate on it.

But it still was there, barely beneath the surface as Sam tugged her shirt off, unclasped her bra and tossed them to the floor before tugging on a gray nightshirt that stopped mid-thigh. They'd been experimenting on him. The pages she tried to forget and couldn't were the documentation of it, harsh enough that she had never seen Skulker coming straight at her, blades bristling from his mechanical glove and arcing down to slash along her arm and spray the white wall red with blood.

The smallest of the three slashes had taken twenty-seven stitches exactly. She'd stopped counting on the second when she'd hit forty-two, and had never bothered starting to count for the third. She'd stumbled into the wall after the attack, ankle twisting painfully as she fought to keep a grip on the clipboard in her hand. Tucker had saved her then, the thermos that Jazz had dropped when the ghost she was fighting had socked her in the eye.

She walked away from it with the stitches, a badly sprained ankle, and ribs that should have been broken, could have been, but weren't. And the only other thing that had interested her before they had fled, realizing that Danny wasn't there. The bright red ink, scrawled in large neat letters reading _Transferred_.

Sam closed her eyes and cried.

xXx

He sighed from habit as he passed through the wall of Sam's apartment, the more than familiar sensation of being intangible tingling through him before he turned himself tangible again and dropped to the floor of her living room without a sound. It was his second stop tonight, his last stop. He'd been to see Tucker, but Tucker had been passed out on his couch, an open bottle of Percocet next to him that had Danny on his knees and spilling pills out to count them before realizing that Tucker had only taken the prescribed amount before drifting off.

There had been no chance to talk to him, so Danny had moved on, knowing that he couldn't go home now. No, he'd go to the only other place he could; Sam's. He could hear her in her bedroom, moving around, the whisper and slip of clothes as she changed. A few muffled sounds of pain. So she'd been hurt too, a fact that twisted his heart in his chest.

But it was the sound of her crying that really hurt. He heard her when she started, heard the way it suddenly muffled and knew that she was crying into her hands then. The hitching, gasping breaths she took, like just breathing hurt her. Without a second thought Danny walked through the wall between her bedroom and the living room, not willing to take time to use the hallway to get to her.

"Sam?" he called softly as he did so, listening as the sobs broke off and feeling the terrible wrenching where his heart was as she lifted her tear streaked face to him, amethyst eyes wide with hope.

"Danny, oh my god," she breathed as she pushed off of the bed and stumbled into his arms, bandaged arm wound around his neck as her weight shifted from one sure foot and one more than a little unsteady, all into Danny's arms.

"I'm sorry I didn't come sooner," he said softly against her hair as he stroked it. "I'm sorry I didn't come save you."

She pulled back and leveled a watery glare that verged on a smile at him. "We were supposed to save _you_," she said back. "Looks like you didn't need that rescue mission after all, huh?"

Danny tried to smile but knew that it never came. "I really am sorry, Sam," he said uncertainly as she folded back down on to her bed, tucking her good ankle up underneath her and letting the other prop itself against the floor safely.

"It's okay," she said, patting the bed next to her and smiling as he sat. "I understand. We all do. You were… a little tied up at the time. We know."

"You're okay?"

Sam nodded. "We're all okay, Danny." At his arched eyebrow she rolled her eyes. "Minor injuries, every one of them."

"Tucker is passed out on Percocet, Sam," Danny said as he waggled a finger at her.

"Tucker is also a wuss. He got some staples in his head and dislocated a finger. It's just to help him sleep." She reached to her nightstand and lifted a bottle that matched Tucker's except for her name. "I got them, too. I'm not planning on using them, but I got them."

"I wanted to see you," he said suddenly, and Sam flushed a little at the intense look on his face. "I wanted to tell you something."

"Confessions after intense and adrenaline driven occurrences aren't exactly reliable, Danny," was all Sam said. A smile twisted his face and he couldn't help himself. He reached out and stroked his hand down the side of her face, watching as she blushed prettily at the touch of his hand before she pulled away with a shiver.

"Your hand is cold," she said softly. "It's warmer when you're human."

"Sam—" he broke off suddenly, his head twisting to her bedroom door and the darkened hallway beyond. When he looked back his eyes were closed and his shoulders drooped, defeat written loud on his face. "I'm sorry, Sam. She's already here. You should go answer your door."

She gave him a strange look but made no protest as he scooped her up and floated through the doorway and down the hall with her safely in his arms. And when he sat her down in the dark next to her front door she could only continue to look at him like he had lost his mind. At least until the knocking started, startling Sam from where she leaned against the door.

And then Jazz's shouts through the door making her even more nervous.

"Danny?" she asked uncertainly, eyes flickering between the door and the man standing next to her.

He smiled brokenly and leaned in to press a cool kiss to her cheek. "I'm sorry, Sam. I wanted to be the one to tell you." He paused, a look of infinite sadness crossing his face. "Guess I was too late."

xXx

"You should let her in."

He sounded so calm to her ears, so terribly calm, like he knew exactly what was going on. It gave her chills, made her feel horribly sick to her stomach. It reminded her too much of three days prior, when every channel in the city had been interrupted by a breaking news bulletin. The Guys in White. "This morning we captured the ghost known as Danny Phantom…"

It had become a blur in her mind as she realized that the attack hadn't had anything in particular to do with Danny's birthday and the long standing grudges most of the inhabitants that Danny knew in the Ghost Zone held against him. No, it was more closely aligned with assassination that anything else, or political kidnapping. It had frightened her beyond belief.

And now he was standing—floating—in front of her telling her so calmly to let his sister in. His sister, who he had known was going to show up before she had without any way of knowing. Yes, it frightened her. But she did as he asked, turned, lost sight of those vivid green eyes for just a moment as she unlocked the door and found Jazz standing in front of her, tears streaming down her cheeks as she reached for Sam and wrapped her in a careless hug.

"H-have you s-s-seen the n-news?" Jazz choked out, and Sam shook her head as tears began to fall faster from Jazz's eyes.

She guided the red-haired girl in, flipped a light on as she limped Jazz to the couch and settled her down, dropping next to her grateful for the weight to be off of her ankle. "Jazz, what's wrong?"

And then, so soft that Sam nearly didn't hear it, "They found Danny, Sam."

"Yeah…" Sam said slowly with a frown. "I know he's escaped."

"No, Sam." Jazz's eyes were suddenly very steady on Sam's. "They found his body. He didn't… He didn't survive what they did to him."

"You're lying." The accusation was fast, furious. Frightened. "He's here right now, he's fine," Sam shot out at Jazz, standing up too fast and nearly falling over as her eyes searched the empty apartment, frantic limping footsteps as she checked her room, the bathroom, kitchen, everywhere. Empty, empty, empty. He wasn't there, and she knew it as she sank back down on the sofa next to the still teary Jazz who was holding on to Sam's remote like it was her last link to sanity.

"He was here," Sam whispered and Jazz numbly clicked the television on, flipping through until she found the vivid CNN byline, a woman who looked like her smile was pasted on her face directing attention to the frame next to her. An ambulance, uniformed people swarming. A stretcher covered in white dotted red. A hand slipping out from underneath to be hurriedly tucked back under.

But not before Sam saw the blood streaking it. Not before Sam recognized it.

The volume rose slowly as Jazz began crying again, and Sam listened intently. "The search for Daniel Fenton, son of prominent paranormal researchers and inventors Jack and Maddie Fenton, is over." Sam's breath hitched. "His body was found two hours ago just outside of St. Louis, and police have indicated foul play was involved…"

The words blurred, just like the telecast of Danny Phantom's capture. Sam's breath stopped in her throat, and burned back out of her in a whimpering cry that quickly turned to tears. "No, no, please no," she whispered faintly. "He was just here; he can't be dead." Sam knew she was the one doing it, that she was the one blocking it out.

Knew that she was the one who was suddenly screaming inside her head, and outside of it too. Knew that it was Jazz that she was sobbing against, Jazz who was trying to steady her enough to take one of the prescribed painkillers, knew that it was Jazz who was guiding her to her room, to her bed, tucking her in and brushing hair back from her face.

It was numb, so numb. The pain had overwhelmed her and she didn't know where it ended and she began. Even as the bedroom door closed to a crack, the lamp at her bed still on, Sam knew that she had lost a part of herself that she could never replace. It was too much, too damned much, and she reached out blindly for the bottle of pills that remained at her bedside.

The bottle of pills and the piece of paper that it stood on top of.

Trembling fingers, fumbling and unsteady held it up where she could read it, and Sam choked back a new onslaught of tears. The pill bottle crashed to the floor, ignored and then forgotten as she curled into her pillow, paper crumpled in her hand as she closed her eyes and cried.

_It's not goodbye, Sam. Don't think of it like that. It's just 'see you later,' because we will. I wanted to be the one to tell you. I'm sorry I'm not._


End file.
